Across the coromandel coast

Beep beep beep .. the sound of alarm started ‘the day’, the day when I would embark on a 1670 km train journey cutting through 4 states running along the coromandel coast …

The train is late – half an hour late - the other train coming from the Trivandrum the special train has come early. Passengers from the just arrived Tamilnadu express walk past in their winter attire – funny, winter attire at 10:15 am in Chennai. A monotonous voice announced the arrival of the train. S6 – 4 LB, a middle aged lady with a 2 year old baby sat in my seat, I took the nearby middle seat, along came mister one hand jones with his right hand in plaster, poor guy had a fracture. One hand jones immediately starting listening to music with his brand new Ipod nano. Not to be left behind, I too took out my own version of Ipod. An uneventful one hour passed with no signs of the TTE. “Saar, I have four ticketsu saar, all four confirmed but two tickets are in S3, there are three ladies saar only me gents, can you take the S3 seat saar”. I pounced on the opportunity and took leave of one hand jones and aunty with baby. S3 -13 someone is sitting in my seat and having full meals, he looked like a Andhrite – “sir, ee seat naadhi, after u have ur meals will u please vacate it” It took 40 minutes for him to finish his lunch, then his wife started having her lunch, not to mention their family friend. So I waited in a nearby seat.

One hour later I got my own seat. Gudur, Nellore, bitragunta, ongole – the train goes on. The only stop being at Ongole for 3 minutes. The 6 month old baby is looking at me as I dropped from Mars. I looked back at her as if she was from Jupiter. Then she slept off.

After having my own lunch of two cakes and one banana, I waited for something interesting to happen. When nothing did, I started to enjoy the beauty outside, agricultural land everywhere, the fertile Nellore delta is ideal for rice cultivation and Nellore is well known. The train passed over the River penna or pennar and then numerous unnamed canals. After seven grueling hours the train stops in the middle of a bridge over Krishna river. The entire train is standing on the bridge seventy to hundred feet above the water surface, stupid people who would install a signal which would stop a train in the middle of a huge bridge? After a chilling 15 minutes the trains starts of again only to stop in Vijayawada – one of the places I have spent many days in my childhood. I get down to get some fresh air and snacks. Half an hour later we move off. 120 minutes later the river I like the most, the bridge I fear the most, by far the longest bridge I have ever seen, I didn’t have a odometer but I bet that bridge was atleast 2 – 2.5 km long, fifteen long minutes to cross that bridge – GODAVARI , such a huge river, I was told that the Godavari is the only river in Andhra which does not have Dam because of its huge size and unavailability of a proper location for a Dam. If traveling over the river in December was so frightening, I can’t imagine traveling in Monsoon when the floods are up. The family with the baby from Jupiter get down at Rajamundhry, in comes Mr. Panparag eating somberi and his friends. Eight in the night and he wanted to sleep, idiot, I had no option, mine was middle berth, so I lay down on berth cursing him till 11 after which I fell asleep. Got up at 8 in the morning and Mr Panparag someberi is still asleep. Result- I went back to sleep, he was waken up by a group of friendly eunuchs, they tried to wake me up too, but um hmm not me :-) as they say “it is easier to wake someone who is asleep not someone who is faking it – as was the case with me that day”. So for the first time I escaped and had a very good feeling seeing Mr Somberi give off Rs 10 . ha ha ha .. he deserved it spitting pan parag all over the place. To top it all he was adjusting his hair style every 5 minutes, to me even vi***’s hair looked neat that day.

No one informed me of the great Mahanadi, I never expected it to be so big, no wonder they named it that way. Smaller only in comparison to the Godavari, the Mahanadi was beautiful. While the Godavari takes your breath away with its huge size, the Mahanadi calms you with its beauty. In the early 8’o clock foggy morning the river looked godly. After Mahanadi we passed over numerous rivers mostly I believe were tributaries or distributaries of the great river. Orissa looked beautiful. It was not ‘one tree’ and water which made it look so, it was the variety one could see. So many different types of plants and trees and not to forget the different crops which were being cultivated. I could make out Sunflowers, some other small yellow flowers which grew in bunches, peanut crops and other crops which I couldn’t name and so many different varieties of trees –not ‘only coconut trees and rubber trees’.

Finally at 11:40 am I got down. The longest platform in the world – KHARAGPUR, 1.072 km long. Other than holding the title of having the longest platform and having its very own IIT, there is nothing else of interest in Kharagpur. One hour journey in a local train to Mecheda, and from there one more hour by road. At last after 26 – 28 hours from the time I got into the 17-D bus to take me to Chennai Central, I am in Haldia, my destination.